making sense of life in the details

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Connected

I got to music class early and set up my iPod dock first thing, as I always do. As the children came in, I was prepared and ready. I pressed play and within six seconds, the song abruptly shut off. “You need to charge it!,” yelled one of my students. Little kids are so technologically savvy these days, aren’t they? But I had charged it. I had done everything that I was supposed to do and it still shut down on me when I needed it. As it turns out, the iPod was not fully connected to the dock; years of dust and dirt sometimes gunk up the works. I had to use a small stack of postcards to prop it up so that the iPod could connect to the player which was connected to the outlet.

These days, I am feeling so much like that iPod. Depleted. In any given stressful situation, I have about six seconds of faith, six seconds of patience, six seconds of peaceful response before it all runs out and leaves me hollow. I am completely without charge though I am trying everything I can to connect to the Power that will produce the music I so need to hear in my life these days. Whatever I try, whether it be prayer or Bible reading or exercise, it doesn’t work for long. I am not connected and I am the worse for it.

What postcards will come along to prop me up? How will I clean out the gunk to make that connection happen? It’s funny, I have a prayer board full of people and I continue to hold them up daily because I believe in intercessory prayer. But for myself, I barrel through and keep pushing, keep trying on my own merit. I have enough evidence in my life to know that I am not alone and that God is good, and I know that praise and faith are muscles that need to be used and strengthened. I am blessed by good people in Heaven and on Earth who pull for me. Everything turns around and all things work for the good. I believe Jesus when He tells me that. I believed my mother when she said, “This too shall pass.”

Until then, I am doing what I can. I danced with my students and I went to Mass and I sat with a cup of tea and I listened to my daughter play guitar and it’s all good. All life affirming. But I find myself singing that song we sometimes sing at the retreat house:

It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer

Not my brother, not my sister, but it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer